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Gillian Thornton explores the pretty town of Figeac and the surrounding countryside of the glorious Célé Valley… Spotlight on FIGEAC, LOT A modest market town in rural Lot isn’t the first place you might expect to find connections between Napoleon Bonaparte, Ancient Egypt and the British Museum. But thanks to the inquisitive mind and dogged determination of 19 th century linguist and puzzle supremo Jean- François Champollion, the medieval town of Figeac in Occitanie provides a link to all three. This buzzing town of around 10,000 inhabitants lies just north of the Lot river in the valley of the Célé, the surrounding area of Grand Figeac designated a Pays d’Art et d’Histoire. With its wealth of medieval buildings, Figeac is a gem for heritage fans, but it has Champollion to thank for its place on the world stage. granite covering most of the floor. A dignified celebration of Figeac’s most famous son. In 1798, Napoleon launched a campaign in Egypt and Syria to defend French trade interests and carry out scientific research. But when the British Navy put paid to the Emperor’s dreams of a Middle Eastern empire, the collection of Egyptian antiquities amassed by his scientists was signed over to the British, including the Rosetta Stone that now stands in the British Museum in London. Once part of a much larger stone tablet, this precious fragment was engraved with three incomplete texts in different scripts, but nobody knew what they said. Academics puzzled for years, but it was more than 20 years before the youngest son of a Figeac bookseller eventually cracked the code. Born in 1790, Jean-François Champollion had left home at 11 to live with his older brother in Grenoble, where he quickly developed a passion for Middle Eastern languages, and at 17, he moved to Paris, determined to decipher the mysterious tablet. Place des Ecritures from the upper garden I’m looking down from a high-level garden in the town centre onto a small pedestrian square surrounded by stone buildings. Little more than a courtyard, the Place des Ecritures is empty apart from an irregular slab of black Musée Champollion - Les écritures du Monde Lot Tourisme © C. Asquier Figeac 30 | The centre Good © Lot Life Tourisme, FranceTeddy Verneuil The Good Life France | 31
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